In class, we briefly discussed verse 38 in Chapter 1 of The Bhagavad Gita. We concluded that the comments in that verse may be interpreted as derogatory, but may not be if given the correct context. Women in India ran their own land, while men moved into the house of their wives and mother-in-laws. As a proud feminist (I know that word carries all sorts of negative connotations, but I promise I don't hate men or burn my bras) I was really intrigued by this. It goes against everything I have heard about women in India: that they face discrimination throughout their lives, and are preferably not born at all. So I decided to do some research online about the treatment of women in Hinduism and found a lot of contrasting views. Some sources state that men and women are of equal status, with the role of mother being enormously respected, and powerful female deities that are honored; others claim that Hinduism supports the genocide of women in India.
I do not see how a nation can go from letting women handle their own lands during a time when it was extremely uncommon, to victimizing them during a time when we are closer to gender equality than ever before. I don't see how a religion so open to others could support such oppression. What am I missing? Hindus have just announced their support of appointing women to the Shura council in Saudi Arabia. Hinduism is the main religion in India. Why is this happening?
My only interpretation of this would be that because Hinduism supports the incorporation of various faiths, that those faiths in turn have different views on women. For example, one religious sect of Hinduism may support the notion that women are to be respected and honored. While another may support the genocide of women. Both can be accepted into the Hindu religion because it is open, but they have varying views.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Kellifurney said. As we discussed in class, Hindu as a religion accepts other people's religions and their forms of worship. It doesn't try to make them/force them to change their beliefs but rather is accepting to who they are. Maybe the branch/s of Hinduism that is against the equality think of a woman as "made of man" so she has to be under him rather than "part of man" - they have to work together in a sense that one can't exist without the other. I hope this helps.
ReplyDeleteThis is how i think of it, like Christianity. All Christians belief in the existence of a God but not all have the same view to what being a "good christian" is all about.
I find the subject interesting as well, thinking about how contrasting some of the views can be, but I completely agree that not everyone thinks the same even in the same religion. People don't always agree about how to solve problems and it seems like only the extremests would contemplate women genocide. Men need women if they want to or not, a society would never survive without either one. I hope one day people can all be viewed as equals but that will take time.
ReplyDeleteTo clarify, the matricentric agrarian family was widespread in several parts of Indian in ancient times, but is much less common today. It survives most strongly in the southern state of Kerala, though there modern industrial patterns of life are steadily undermining it. It helps to remember that India is not and never was a single place -- the subcontinent has a landmass about one-third the size of North America, but 150 different living languages (and thousands of dialects) with fourteen distinct language systems -- some of which are not even related to the others. As I said, it is a genuinely and deeply diverse place.
ReplyDeleteIt is possible, even likely, that the ancient Harrapan and Saraswatan civilizations were largely matricentric, but the Aryan tribes who filtered in through the Himalaya were originally patriarchal nomadic herders, which shook things up as they came to dominate the region. Several thousand years later, the Mogul (Mongol/Muslim) conquerers of most of North India were unapologetically patriarchal. Still later, Portuguese (in the West) and British (in the South originally, then all over) brought still more male-dominant, modern institutions to the region.